A magnetic resonance imaging apparatus (hereinafter, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apparatus) is an apparatus that visualizes atom distribution in a subject nondestructively using nature that atoms of hydrogen and the like arranged in a magnetic field selectively absorb and release only electromagnetic waves of a frequency determined depending on the types of the atoms and the magnetic field among electromagnetic waves of various frequencies.
The MRI apparatus controls radio frequency (RF) pulses and the magnetic field in accordance with control flow called a pulse sequence in data acquisition. Although depending on the type of the pulse sequence, the pulse sequence has imaging conditions such as a flip angle, repetition time (TR), echo time (TE), inversion time (TI), spin lock time (TSL), and saturation recovery time (TSR). There are techniques of generating a parameter mapping image, such as T1 mapping and T2 mapping, by generating a plurality of images having different contrasts while stepwisely changing some of the imaging conditions and estimating parameters depending on target tissues, such as a T1 value and a T2 value, using the difference in the contrast among the plurality of images.